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LabVIEW abandons Mac after 4 decades

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Re: LabVIEW abandons Mac after 4 decades

#11

Post by PeterStuer »

InvisibleUp wrote: post #9

Unsurprising really. I've only ever seen LabVIEW running on Windows machines. Hopefully this will allow them to ease up a bit on maintenance work and tackle some of their long, long overdue technical debt. Perhaps they can have a file format that's compatible with version control instead of using a modified version of the Macintosh resource fork format, for one.

As far as I remember there was a time LabVIEW only ran on Mac's, but admittedly back then the only common GUI machines around were Mac's and Sun workstations. (Windows existed but was in it's barely usable pre 3.11 state).

Re: LabVIEW abandons Mac after 4 decades

#13

Post by lvoudour »

fndksksvdk wrote: post #3

I've seen lots of shops running labview, but never on a Mac. I doubt NI's losing many customers with this move. Maybe with a focus on Windows they can finally implement zooming in and out of VIs. It's like a text editor that doesn't let you change the font size. Probably in the pocket of Big Monitor.

> Maybe with a focus on Windows they can finally implement zooming in and out of VIs

Can I Zoom In or Out in the LabVIEW Block Diagram? https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z000...

>The zoom in and zoom out feature in LabVIEW is only available starting from LabVIEW 2023 Q3.

We really live in the end of times!

Re: LabVIEW abandons Mac after 4 decades

#15

Post by pjmlp »

wenc wrote: post #6
iancmceachern wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, education is the only market I can think of for labview on a mac.

I think most university labs run Labview on Windows these days. I know Labview has a history of running on classic Macs, but I don't think I've seen Labview on Mac ever.

They already did in the past, Apple doesn't have that big customer size outside US and similar economies.

The Quadras and LC on my campus back in the day were a very special breed, as the IT department even had a couple of NeXT cubes.

The peasants would get thin terminals to DG/UX and later on Red-Hat, or Windows 3.x/95/NT, depending on the laboratory.

Re: LabVIEW abandons Mac after 4 decades

#16

Post by TheCapeGreek »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #12

This seems to be happening a lot lately. Just this year, Visual Studio, Counter Strike 2, and now LabVIEW.

I'm no game dev, what I gather is that Apple hasn't been very friendly in terms of graphics drivers and compatibility in general. There was that article a little while ago where some company implemented a fully compliant Vulkan for Apple Silicon better than Apple did? If Apple makes it more difficult almost on purpose, why should developers come to the table when their target audience isn't on the platform?

I get the impression that mac-specific tools work very smoothly and nicely, but cross-compatible tools suffer needlessly.

For Valve at least the decision seems to make sense - Linux has overtaken macOS in their hardware survey. No doubt Steam Deck and Proton have a hand in it.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/10/september-2023-steam-s...

Re: LabVIEW abandons Mac after 4 decades

#17

Post by hulitu »

oldbbsnickname wrote: post #2

Ouch. For reference, LabVIEW is used by many types of engineers, especially industrial process engineers to develop custom control systems, say controlling the automation of steelworks. It involves visual programming and process engineering. This will hurt industry because it regresses development and production environments onto a monoculture of Windows with some Linux. A problem of supporting and using non-Windows…

Macs lack expansion ports.

Re: LabVIEW abandons Mac after 4 decades

#18

Post by [deleted] »

pmarreck wrote: post #8

I remember seeing LabVIEW ads in MacWorld magazine as a teen in the 80's. (The Mac 128k was our first family computer; it eventually got upgraded to a Mac Plus) I never had reason to use it but it was very well-known in the Mac space (which I was part of for decades). The end of an era. As a "conscientious Windows objector", I've made do on Linux for the past 2 years once I finally figured out the only sane distro (N…

[deleted]

Re: LabVIEW abandons Mac after 4 decades

#19

Post by BlueTemplar »

wenc wrote: post #6
iancmceachern wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, education is the only market I can think of for labview on a mac.

I think most university labs run Labview on Windows these days. I know Labview has a history of running on classic Macs, but I don't think I've seen Labview on Mac ever.

It's not like you often see Macs in education, even among students !

Re: LabVIEW abandons Mac after 4 decades

#20

Post by lapcat »

jimnotgym wrote: post #10

> "you can continue using the LabVIEW 2023 Q3 for macOS development system indefinitely." In my experience it is not very long before an update nails MacOS software if you don't actively maintain it. "Indefinitely", if you turn off updates and keep your hardware alive.

> In my experience it is not very long before an update nails MacOS software if you don't actively maintain it.

That's not my experience.

Of course the removal of 32-bit support in macOS Catalina was a killer, but otherwise I regularly use a number of older apps.

Here's a notable example: via Rosetta, I'm still using the preference pane RCDefaultApp 2.1, which was last updated in 2009. It still works 14 years later! https://rubicode.com/Software/RCDefaultApp/index.html#versio...

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